DARPA testing electricity to self-heal the body

click to enlargeI sing the self-healing Body Electric! With apologies to Ray Bradbury, in this Editor’s view, DARPA’s ElectRX research is almost revolutionary, yet logical. Like a pacemaker, it monitors a condition (like heartbeat) and if ‘off’ stimulates the organ through an electric shock. Scale it to a nano-sized neuromodulator and you have ElectRX. In broad terms, a tiny device, perhaps delivered by a needle, analyzes an anomaly and delivers an electrical signal to nerve pathways to correct it. For diabetics, it could stimulate insulin production; to treat depression, control inflammation in the brain; for PTSD patients, stimulate the vagus nerve for neural plasticity. Controlling inflammation has other benefits, such as in spinal injury and in TBI. While the Gizmag article spends time musing on ‘super-soldiers’ and the negative aspect, this Editor sees this research on the relationship between neural circuits and health as a significant development for both medicine and for Version 3.0 of digital health. DARPA web page on ElectRX.

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Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:

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• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.

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